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A few salient facts emerge:

He didn’t know what a goblet squat is.

He didn’t know that bacon is a processed meat.

He doesn’t like green smoothies.

By the time my alarm goes off at seven, it’s utterly obvious that he can’t possibly be a journalist for Fit Life . From the very first morning I saw him, Daniel has seemed like a fish out of water, hasn’t he? Since then, he’s shown me over and over that he doesn’t belong.

Then why is he here?

As I pour my coffee, I come to a swift decision: I have to talk to Vic. If Daniel really is digging into Michael’s death, Vic should know. After all, Vic and I share a common interest when it comes to matters of deaths at the Riovan: cover them up.

Very possibly, it’s our only commonality– but an important one.

‘Do you have a minute to talk about Daniel Black?’ I say, leaning into the door frame of Vic’s sunny office thirty minutes before my morning beach shift.

It’s supposed to be a beautiful day, as post-storm days usually are.

Blue skies and bright sun– the opposite of the never-ending sleepless night I’m just emerging from.

Vic removes his fashionable, clear-framed reading glasses and sets them on the desk.

‘Tell me Serena didn’t pull another Serena,’ he says, sounding pre-emptively exhausted.

‘No, nothing like that.’ I come in the rest of the way, close the door behind me, and sit across from him. Lean on my elbows. ‘He’s been asking me questions about that death last year. You know… the music producer?’

Vic groans and leans back in his chair. ‘Michael Johnson,’ he fills in. ‘Carli Elle’s manager.’

‘Right. I just wonder,’ I say carefully, ‘if Daniel might be here under… false pretences?’

‘Why can’t people leave well enough alone?’ says Vic, snapping his head back up in real exasperation. ‘I do not need another branding crisis this year!’

‘Sorry,’ I say humbly.

It hasn’t escaped me that every time I kill, I am leaving a bit of a mess for poor Vic– but maybe part of me enjoys that little twist of the knife.

The first year, Vic was person of interest number one on my target shortlist. After all, who could be more toxic than the manager of a toxic place?

I even planned his death, involving a modification to his nightly Old Fashioned that would interact with his medication regime.

Ultimately, I had to bow to practicalities and hit the brakes.

He was too high up to kill. His death would risk too much attention.

Not to mention, Vic seemed to both like and respect me– which made him my ticket back into this place.

I’ve come to understand that Vic is both oblivious and impervious to the Riovan’s toxicity.

He doesn’t see the harm he’s doing; he’s too self-obsessed.

You can just feel it when you’re around him– that Vic loves Vic with every ounce of Vic’s heart.

Sometimes I want to shake his bronzed shoulders and say, ‘Wake up and smell the shit you’re calling roses!

’ But I’ve concluded the exercise would be useless.

People like him can’t understand the rest of us– the ones with cracks where the poison can leak in.

‘No, you did the right thing, telling me,’ Vic says, shaking his head. ‘These journalists.’

‘Daniel seems to think it wasn’t a suicide,’ I say, trying to sound innocently surprised. ‘But it was… right?’

‘Of course it was,’ he says, with so much conviction I almost believe it myself– and I’m the killer. Good old Vic. Just as stubbornly oblivious as always. ‘Any more questions, you send him my way.’

‘Will do.’

Vic’s gaze floats to the window. His mind seems suddenly elsewhere. ‘There was a death the year before that… do you remember?’ His eyes slide back to mine.

I shake my head, even though my mental file spits it all out. Brett Teubler. Staff nutritionist with a convenient allergy to penicillin. It wasn’t as hard to get hold of the antibiotic as you might imagine.

‘A staff member died,’ says Vic.

‘Oh … that’s right. B … Brent?’

‘Brett. We kept it quiet. It was a freak medication mistake, but…’ Vic’s forehead almost wrinkles. ‘Never mind.’

‘What?’

‘Well, it’s silly. Blame it on my superstitious abuela, but sometimes I can’t help but think this place is cursed. Did you know it used to be a sanatorium?’

‘No,’ I say with an involuntary shiver. However involved I’ve been in the hotel’s present, I’ve never looked into its past.

‘Yes… the place was originally built in the 1890s. Rich French families used to send their daughters here to have abortions, whether they wanted to have them or not. And sometimes the servants too, if… well, you get the picture. My abuela used to say, Victor, evil calls to evil. I can’t help but think…

’ His brown eyes meet mine. ‘Every year I’ve worked here, someone has died. ’

I force myself to breathe normally, blink normally, keep my face calmly compassionate, but say nothing.

‘Do you believe in curses?’ says Vic.

‘No,’ I say.

And I’m not interested in dwelling too long on the idea, since that would make me the curse.

We wrap it up, but I leave my tête-à-tête with Vic feeling sobered, thinking about those girls who were sent here, possibly against their will.

Their bodies were a source of shame. The professionals had to intervene.

I guess a hundred and thirty years later, nothing on this island has changed.

As I pass through the hotel lobby, a pile of magazines on a low table catches my eye. On top is a copy of Fit Life , with a muscled couple on the front in wedding garb holding up cake topper figurines that look like mini Hulks. Dax I’d convinced myself he wouldn’t be in here, but his name is plain as day under his article, entitled ‘Has Body Positivity Gone Too Far?’

I start reading. We’ve all heard that big is beautiful. I’m here to tell you today: it’s not. When did our culture become so dishonest? We’ve become brainwashed with body positivity messaging, and the world needs to wake up and smell the roses: it’s killing us. One pound at a time.

It’s like I’m frozen in place. I read to the end.

Motherfucker.

No. He can’t have written this. Not the man I met last week who was so charming by the coffee, so sweet when I trauma-dumped at the Mambotel. Not the man whose bed I leapt into just yesterday.

Could they have made him write it?

But even as I try to find an excuse, I remember Daniel’s words.

I promised myself I’d never compromise again.

It sounded so lofty when he said it to me…

and all that stuff about his responsibility to humankind or whatever…

Is this judgemental piece-of-shit article his way of fulfilling his duty towards truth?

I rummage through the stack on the table and pull the previous month’s issue. I rifle through the pages, scanning for his name. Oh, no. This one’s worse. ‘Sex with Big Girls: The Honest Take’.

I don’t want to read it. But more than that, I don’t want Daniel to have written it.

I’m told that gentlemen don’t kiss and tell… then again, I’ve never thought of myself as a gentleman. I’m a journalist, and I’m here to tell you the unvarnished truth.

I can barely stomach what I read next. It’s crass. Misogynistic. Pure poison. Everything I hate most about the world we live in.

This isn’t a guy who’s removed his rose-coloured glasses. This is a guy who’s picked up the fun-house glasses from the pits of hell and is looking at the whole world through them while shouting loudly about what he sees. And getting paid for it, to boot.

You want a toxic target to fill in that final slot? a voice in my head says. You’ve got one.

Shit fuck, fuck, fuck shit.

I storm out of the lobby, throwing the magazine into the nearest trash bin where it belongs.

I may have to kill Daniel Black.